The lies and excuses of Robbie Neilson at Celtic Park

Whatever the scoreline Robbie Neilson has excuses and lies ready to explain another defeat at Celtic Park.

It is a technique that the Hearts boss has mastered with a chuckling media pack happy to publish whatever nonsense he comes up with without any scrutiny.

In December 2021 he was squealing about an offside goal scored by Kyogo Furuhashi that the combined might of Kris Boyd, BBC Scotland and Crawford Allan couldn’t come up with any evidence to back it up.

Back in August, after the usual procession of fouls and time wasting Toby Sibbick and Alex Cochrane picked up second bookings after the 88^th minute. It never occurred to Neilson to take either defender off and stick on a stoker with the score 1-0 to Celtic, Giorgos Giakoumakis made it 2-0 in stoppage time.

Last night he was whining about a challenge from Alexandro Bernabei that was similar to the procession of fouls dished out by Cammy Devlin, James Hill and Andy Halliday on a rota.

In October at Tynecastle Nick Walsh refused to award Celtic a clear penalty for handball by Michael Smith, last night the Hearts boss was wanting the same official, now on VAR duty, to red card Bernabei.